Though Jod Na Nawood character is notably more comely and coherent as, "the one adult in the merry band," than Sloth was.Goonies iiiin Spaaaaace!!!!
I'm actually kinda liking it -- and more than I expected to, given the Disney shows to date.
Look, I watched Episode 8 exactly the once and got as flabbergasted (in a bad way) as anybody else, and then when D&D started riffing on the film I was mostly reminded of how incredibly stupid the films have been. I intend to go through their ‘edition’ of the Han Solo film without having watched the film.
How ‘The Acolyte’ Beat Star Wars ‘Skeleton Crew’
Star Wars is having somewhat of a resurgence right now. A lukewarm reception to the third season of The Mandalorian in 2023 was followed by Ahsoka which was only slightly better-received by audiences. The nadir was last year's The Acolyte, the worst-reviewed Star Wars show in history. Then came Skeleton Crew, which captured the hearts of fans with its 1980s-inspired storyline. However, it doesn't appear to have been enough to make its mark.
Skeleton Crew stars Jude Law as a quick-witted space pirate who has mastered the all-powerful force and befriends a group of children trying to find their way home after getting lost in the galaxy. The eight-part Disney+ streaming series is a coming of age story with similarities to beloved 1985 adventure movie The Goonies.
Like The Goonies it has been a hit with fans and critics alike. After seven episodes Skeleton Crew has earned an impressive rating of 91% from critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes whilst audiences have awarded it a respectable 80%. Word about it doesn't seem to have spread far though as Skeleton Crew didn't make it into Nielsen’s Top 10 Original Streaming chart in its first two weeks.
Surprisingly Skeleton Crew failed to qualify despite debuting its first two episodes on the same night. During the week of its premiere the bottom spot on Nielsen’s streaming originals list was occupied by The Great British Baking Show, which was viewed for 382 million minutes meaning that Skeleton Crew came to less than that.
This puts the average per episode under 191 million minutes making it lower than the 244 million for each of The Acolyte's first two instalments which both appeared in Nielsen's top ten list. There may be good reason why Skeleton Crew wasn't so lucky.
The female-focused cast of The Acolyte led to it courting controversy before it had even launched. It led to the show being branded woke and getting review-bombed. In turn, its cast and showrunner Leslye Headland had to defend its diversity and inclusivity throughout the run of the show which kept it in the public eye.
It may explain why The Acolyte's finale returned to Nielsen's Top 10, albeit in the the bottom place, despite the show being far from perfect in line with its 78% critics' rating on Rotten Tomatoes and its much lower 19% audience score.
The questionable caliber of the show kept people talking, as did this author's revelation that it cost Disney a staggering $207.8 million to make. What's more, its diversity only appeared to be skin deep as a follow up report revealed that just 30% of the 695 employees on the show were female and across the entire workforce, women's average hourly pay was 19.4% lower than men’s.
That fueled yet more media coverage and so did Disney's decision to to scrap plans for a second season just over a month after the curtain came down on the first one. At times The Acolyte was the talk of the town and Disney made the most of it. As user Robert V wrote on X, "I saw ads for Acolyte after it was canceled!"
With so many talking points, it's perhaps no surprise that The Acolyte was rarely out of the media during its run. As the chart below shows, 4,911 articles mentioned The Acolyte last year with a massive 34.6% of them coming in June when the show premiered. In contrast, Skeleton Crew was only mentioned 2,895 times in 2024 with the peak during its December debut being 21.5% lower than The Acolyte's tally in the month it launched.
'The Acolyte' v 'Skeleton Crew' media mentions
MSM
The data comes from Factiva, a search engine owned by Dow Jones which spans more than two billion articles from 33,000 news, data and information sources in 32 languages. Factiva is constantly updated so its archive is as comprehensive as they come.
There are two reasons why the media dominance of The Acolyte caused a disturbance in the force for Skeleton Crew. Firstly, it sent out a signal that Star Wars may be past its prime. Secondly it led to Star Wars fatigue making media outlets less likely to write about a solid show with no controversial angles so soon after one which became famous for all the wrong reasons.
As a result, Skeleton Crew has only attracted 59% of the coverage that The Acolyte got and it doesn't seem to have been watched as much despite being far better reviewed. Many potential viewers may not even know that it is playing and it could have The Acolyte to thank for that. With only one episode remaining they don't have long to find out.
The Best Star Wars Movie In Years Is Made With AI
Screen capture of a dramatic moment in Kavan [+] Cardoza's short Star Wars fan film.
Kavan Cardoza
It was just another morning on my way to work on Tuesday when I received an email that stopped me in my tracks. It was a link to “The Ghost’s Apprentice,” a new short film set in the Star Wars universe by visionary filmmaker and AI artist Kavan Cardoza, known professionally as Kavan the Kid. Within moments, I was watching what might be the most stunning Star Warscontent in years—crafted not by Lucasfilm’s industrial machine, but by a single independent creator using cutting-edge AI tools.
Cardoza is no stranger to viral AI-powered filmmaking. In December, his AI-generated Batman short stunned audiences with its eerie, dreamlike quality—so much so that Warner Bros. promptly issued a takedown order. Now, he’s done the same with Star Wars, and if Disney isn’t already drafting a cease-and-desist, they will be by the time you finish reading this.
But they shouldn’t. They should hire him.
Cardoza's earlier AI fan film took a simiilar [+] approach, recreating the Batman and the world of Gotham City with eerie precision.
An AI-Powered Triumph
Cardoza’s Star Wars short fan film tells a story as old as the franchise itself—a young Jedi, abandoned by his mother for his own safety, is trained in isolation by his uncle, and his uncle’s ghost. What sets it apart isn’t just its emotional depth, but the sheer technical brilliance of its execution. Importantly, when I showed the film on the big screen in the lecture hall, it looked great. No artifacts, no hallucinations. If I didn’t tell you the spectacular visuals were made by AI, you wouldn’t know it. The kick-ass storytelling was all Cardoza.
During a last-minute Zoom call with my “AI and Pre-production” class at Chapman University’s Dodge Film School, Cardoza shared how he created the film in just 14 days, working 12-hour days with a mix of AI tools, including Google’s Veo, Midjourney, and Runway. He pushed AI-generated video to its absolute limits, describing how he burned through Google Veo’s capacity so aggressively that he was cut off from further access.
For most of the film, Veo handled the text-to-video generation, seamlessly bringing Cardoza’s vision to life. But when he lost access with just one scene left, he had to pivot—switching to Kling and Midjourney for the final shots. “I literally got 10 and a half of the 11 and a half minute video done through Veo,” Cardoza told my class. “Then I lost access. It was like running a marathon and seeing the finish line, and someone just comes up and nails you in the knee.”
“It was cool to finally have the tools and the ability to do something like this without it costing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Cardoza. “Now, it’s just about how far you’re willing to push the tech.”
The Future of Filmmaking—Or the End of Hollywood?
“This is the end of Hollywood,” one of my students remarked during our call. “No,” I said. “This is the dawn of a new Hollywood.” What a spectacular opportunity for talented and ambitious young people.
Cardoza is already in talks with major studios and brands. Since Batman, his AI-powered studio, Phantom X, has been flooded with inquiries. Hollywood’s gatekeepers may be scrambling to shut him down, but the industry should be learning from him instead.
Star Wars has always been a mythology for dreamers and rebels—people who push against the establishment to create something bigger than themselves. If there’s any justice in the galaxy, Kavan Cardoza won’t be getting a cease-and-desist.
He’ll be getting a contract.
I admit, the acting in the Prequels was not it's selling point, but it's an underappreciated masterpiece, where the REAL good parts often elude most. It's got that in common with the Matrix Trilogy, and it's stiff and awkward acting
And, when it is no longer slop, the human species is in trouble.
I'm not sure the AI hoards would care about them any more, once they no longer needed their code keys (because they had made their own). But I digress. And, I may be veering more into Captain Power, Termininator, and the Matrix than immensely impractical mass obsolence.
